Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Our 6th Birthday Post: Streets Ahead – David Tucker on Guiding

“This is the third time I’ve been on this
walk with you and every time it’s different.”

Thus spake an American lady on Sunday on my
Hampstead walk. And, yes, it was said admiringly, said happily.

The reply to which was something along the
lines of: “For sure, a walking tour’s a living thing, a work in progress. If
you’re [the guide] doing the job right you keep on drilling down – and
connecting up. Finding out more about the place – and people – you’re guiding.
You’re peering down ever further into the depths of the past. But you’ve also
got to be alert to the way its surface is ever changing. Ever changing because
it reflects and refracts the shifting scene of the present.”

Case in point. My Sunday afternoon Old City
walk. The names up on the marquee are Shakespeare and Dickens. The walk goes in
search of them, their times, their London.

Thinking (a lot, of late) about the killing
fields there – which we go over on the walk. And peer into. Catch a glimpse –
well, more than a glimpse – of Edward Arden, Shakespeare’s relative, who was
hanged, drawn and quartered there. And Shakespeare, just a few years later,
living a stone’s throw away from that terrible place. And posing the question –
how did he deal with that?

How would any of us deal with it?

Did he avoid going there? Skirt the killing
fields? Or did he somehow blinker his mind – force his thoughts elsewhere? Or
did he look the cruel, red-eyed beast right in the eye? Indeed, did he do what
so many of his fellow Londoners did – stand in the crowd, be there, be a
spectator at any of the many executions that took place during his time in
London?

Whichever course he adopted, how could it
not have been red hot and clanged out, sparks flying in the forge of his mind?
How could it not have shaped and coloured his thinking about cruelty and power
and tyranny and courage and the terrible things human beings do to other human
beings?

The screams of agony from those killing
fields – how could they not have gone on echoing in his mind?

And then just a slight step back – and a
big leap forward.

The step back to a gv (general view, big
picture view) of the general turmoil of those times. Of the dizzying – and
terrifying – changes. The sense of being in a power-gone-brakes-gone-steering-gone
runaway vehicle hurtling down a mountain road.

Come on, climb aboard. Let’s take that 16th
century “ride”.

Pottering along snug in the time immemorial,
highly conservative Roman Catholicism in the England of the 1520s…

And then – what’s this? – suddenly,
abruptly, Catholicism under the supreme headship of the king? Whoa. Out of left
field that.

And then (“hey guys, no brakes at all”) – a
much more radical Protestantism.

And then (“hang on”)– the hairpin of
aggressive, take-no-prisoners, militant, renewed Catholicism.

And then: Protestantism…again.

Yeah, dizzying.

Worse than dizzying.

Deadly.

Because the outriders – there at every
turn, every lurch – were conspiracy and persecution. And the tools of their
trade: rack and thumbscrew and axe and fire.

And how can we not make the connection? The
surface of the past ever changing because it mirrors the present.

Yes, that’s right (this is the big leap
forward). I’m talking about British troops in Iraq. Again. And Sunnis. And Shiites.
And Al Queda. And Isis. (“Where’d they come from? Who’d heard of them before a
couple of months ago”?) And beheadings.

I mean you can run the table: conspiracy,
persecution, dizzying shifts, on it goes.

Well we might ask – what next?

Whither’s the hurtling vehicle taking us?

Well, that’s flash photography. Going to
switch it off now. Because for sure, the walk is what it
is. It’s not about “current events”. It is about Shakespeare’s and Dickens’ Old
City.

But that connection – that parallel – is
there. It’s there to be made. Takes all of 20 seconds.

And making the connection – well, it’s like
seeing with two eyes rather than one. It’s a useful moment of calibration, of
depth and perspective.

You want to see the past – see it steady
and see it whole – you also have to see the present. And vice versa.

A
London Walk costs £9 – £7 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your
guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all
London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.